A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c7.s2.13

c7.s2.13

he is indestructible for he cannot be destroyed; he is unattached because he clings to nothing; he is unbound, he does not wriggle, he is not injured...... Know this to be the secret of immortality, said Yājñavalkya to Maitreyi, and forthwith he entered the order of Saṃnyāsa" (S. 27. e). There is, however, one passage from the Bṛhadāraṇyaka where an attempt is made to give a positive connotation to the expression Neti Neti: "It is for this reason that they describe the Absolute as Neti Neti: there is nothing which exists outside it, the Brahman being all-inclusive" (S. 27. f). The inclusive character of the Absolute leads to a transcendental view about it in a later passage of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka where the Absolute is described as full both "of light and not-light, of desire and not-desire, of anger and not-anger, of law and not-law, having verily filled all, both the near and the far-off, the this and the that, the subject and the object" (S. 27. g). We thus see how the Upanishadic characterisation of the Absolute passes from the negative stage of neither-nor, through the affirmative stage of inclusiveness, to the transcendental state of either-or.